They’re baaaack!

LeBron James looks stupid again.

And what could complete the last year in a half better than a swarm and crap falling from the sky.

These Guys Can’t Help Themselves

Way back, the government used something called earmarks to fund the pet projects for some politicians. This was supported by both parties. It is one of the reasons that term “swamp” came out for defining the government.

What an earmark is an amendment to a budget bill to include pet projects. It is used to buy the vote for the bill so that it can pass. In the old days, there would be dozens and dozens of earmarks in a bill just to guarantee that the bill would pass. The big problem is that a bill that costs a little bit could suddenly costs billions more because of those earmark. What’s worse, people only looked at the title of the bill and didn’t know what was in the bill. They only heard about it from some news outlets.

Couple of things happened that made Congress get rid of earmarks in 2011:

• The Internet – People can not look up what is in a specific bill.
• Non-legacy news like Daily Wire and The Blaze (even Fox News) that would call out these earmarks.
• Corruption.

Two ex-lawmakers even faced jail time after an investigation into their earmarks. Former Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., used earmarks to launder taxpayer money through a nonprofit, while former Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., accepted $2.4 million in bribes for earmarks and even lived on a yacht owned by a defense contractor.

Well, they’re back. And this is the worst time to spend money.

Congress is trying to set up the federal budget this month. This is outside the $6 trillion that Joe Biden is throwing out there. This budget is just to keep the government open. Basically, we are going to have to spend a ton more money to keep the government running. Here ae some of the earmarks that are being added to the federal funding bill:

• $1,750,000 to spruce up the Japanese Garden in Portland.
• $436,100 for a “meditation and restorative yoga” program in New Jersey.
• $250,000 to expand the Michelle Obama Library in California.
• Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., wants $3.75 million to restore the Waukegan Carnegie Museum.
• $2 million in funding for a new art collection at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
• $2 million for a Pickleball and Fitness Circuit in Orange, Calif.
• $1.5 million to provide free public Wi-Fi in a California city and $250,000 for a performing arts center that, according to the website of Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., “should be more than a beautifully designed building.”
• There are dozens of projects that list diversity and equity among their goals, including $742,000 for a New York program that would feature “conversations around difficult issues such as racism, gender discrimination and cultural bias”.
• $166,000 for the development of an equity program at Lincoln University.
• There are also millions of dollars, collectively, earmarked for public arts programs, climate change initiatives and Planned Parenthood.
• This additional spending will add over $6 billion to the current federal budget.

This is a bipartisan issue too. A total of 326 members of the House, including 220 Democrats and 106 Republicans. There are 435 members of Congress so you do the math.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/earmarks-pet-projects-government-spending-billions-lawmakers

Shut Up and Dribble

LeBron James had faced a lot of criticisms lately:

• His support for BLM while remaining silent on China’s suppression of Hong Kong.
• He supported kneeling for the National Anthem.
• He keeps bitching that he’s oppressed because he’s black. Never mentions that he’s worth a billion dollars. Literally.
• The doxxing and threatening of the police officer who shot Ma’Khia Bryant. That’s the 16-year-old girl who was shot by a police officer while she was trying to stab another teenager.
• The Lakers sucking because he’s playing like crap.
• The fact the Lakers may not make the playoffs.

He took a lot of crap for doxxing that cop. So much so that he pulled down the tweet and would not address it again. But now, he has decided to read one of the most horrendeous articles from Vox and use that as a reference for why the death of  Ma’Khia Bryant was proof of systemic police racism. He tweeted:

One thing I want to propose to you is building your political case on a lie is not a way to argue. Let’s read a little of the article and debunk it right from the start. This is actually a really long article but I did not feel there was a point in reading it all when the premise of the first couple of paragraphs was based on a lie.

It is titled, Why they’re not saying Ma’Khia Bryant’s name by Fabiola Cineas and was released on May 1. I find it amazing that this was allowed to be published. Apparently there are no editors at Vox.

After watching 15 seconds of police body camera footage last week, viewers of various races and political affiliations had made a decision: 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was “the aggressor” — the “fat,” “huge,” “knife-wielding attacker” and “maniac” who deserved to be fatally shot by the police on April 20 in Columbus, Ohio.

• People didn’t make the “decision” Bryant was the aggressor, the body cam footage showed she was going to stab another 16-year-old black girl.
• In fact, the video caught her saying, “I am going to stab you, bitch” so it seems like there was plenty of intent for what she was going to do.
• I have read a lot about this case and never heard anyone call Bryant “fat”, “huge”, or a “maniac”. By the way, all of her references are not coming from main stream media outlet except for knife-wielding. Probably because she was wielding a knife.
• I have heard that the police officer did not have a choice, no one said she deserved to be shot.

According to these viewers, Nicholas Reardon, the police officer who immediately shot and killed Bryant, who was holding a knife, was justified. That she was a teenager in the middle of an altercation, in which she was presumed to be defending herself, did not matter.

• Nick Reardon had, literally, ten seconds to save the other girl’s life. There are two videos proving this.
• And this is common thing with the news media. This was not an altercation. Bryant was going to stab an unarmed girl. Me yelling at someone and him yelling at me is an altercation.

Reardon shot Bryant dead about 20 minutes before a judge announced that a jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd, a killing that catalyzed worldwide protests against police violence. For a moment, those seeking justice for Black life exhaled in relief, knowing that the officer who callously took Floyd’s life would be imprisoned.

• This case has nothing to do with the Chauvin case.
• This, like most other uses of force, was completely justified and needed for saving the life of another black teenager.
• By the way, you do have to accept that Derrick Chauvin did use excessive force against an innocent person. We’ve talked enough about hat case and I don’t buy the narrative.

But the cries for justice that applied to George Floyd did not ring out as loudly for Bryant. Even after it was discovered that Bryant was living in foster care, that she was in the middle of a fight with older women when police arrived, and that she was allegedly the one who summoned the police for help, people — some of the same people who called for justice in Floyd’s case — used police talking points to justify the four bullets that Reardon unloaded into Bryant’s chest. She was brandishing a knife, many pointed out, which meant the other Black women needed to be protected.

• Bryant living in foster care is irrelevant here. In fact, it brings to question her upbringing and is proof that a good family life is important.
• The older woman was a year older. She was also a teen! 
• And what difference do ages make here? Would that have changed something?
• Bryant did not call the police. It was the girl who was attacked. This is just a lie!

Crisis response experts noted, however, that deescalation tactics — like commanding Bryant to drop the weapon, physically getting between the women, or simply communicating with her — could have kept everyone alive. In many recorded encounters between the police and white people carrying weapons, for instance, officers didn’t shoot first or even reach for their guns — they successfully managed to peacefully apprehend the suspect.

• I love getting alternate scenarios from people who were not involved.
• The officer had ten seconds to save this other girl’s life. There was no time for de-escalation.
• Yes, many recorded confrontations don’t lead to use of force. That actually is proof that police don’t shoot people willy-nilly.

I’m done reading this. When an article is based on narratives and lies, it’s hard to take it seriously especially when we actually have video of the shooting. By the way, the article did not include the video. I wonder why.

LeBron James just made a dumb tweet dumber by referencing this article to prove his point.

https://www.vox.com/22406055/makhia-bryant-police-shooting-columbus-ohio
https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-fueled-the-wrong-conversation-about-makhia-bryant-lebron-james-avoids-responsibility-portrays-bryant-as-a-victim

Science and Nature

As The Daily Wire reported in January, “In one of nature’s mysteries, 15 states will soon witness the reemergence of Brood X — or the Great Eastern Brood — of periodical cicadas. These ‘large, winged, kind of scary-looking but mostly harmless flying insects known for their almost deafening buzz’ emerge in-unison every 17 years.”

We’ve been shut down for the last year and a half so, why not throw in a swarm or a plague or two.

Brood X is expected to appear in Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

I love this explanation from University of Maryland entomologist Michael Raupp:

“You’ve got a creature that spends 17 years in a Covid-like existence, isolated underground sucking on plant sap, right? In the 17th year these teenagers are going to come out of the earth by the billions if not trillions. They’re going to try to best everything on the planet that wants to eat them during this critical period of the nighttime when they’re just trying to grow up, they’re just trying to be adults, shed that skin, get their wings, go up into the treetops, escape their predators.

“Once in the treetops, hey, it’s all going to be about romance. It’s only the males that sing. It’s going to be a big boy band up there as the males try to woo those females, try to convince that special someone that she should be the mother of his nymphs. He’s going to perform, sing songs. If she likes it, she’s going to click her wings. They’re going to have some wild sex in the treetop.

“Then she’s going to move out to the small branches, lay their eggs. Then it’s all going to be over in a matter of weeks. They’re going to tumble down. They’re going to basically fertilize the very plants from which they were spawned. Six weeks later the tiny nymphs are going to tumble 80 feet from the treetops, bounce twice, burrow down into the soil, go back underground for another 17 years.”

So there is not going to be a lot of sleep on the East Coast.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/trillions-of-cicadas-start-to-emerge-after-17-years-underground-expected-to-swamp-15-states

Is It Really a Surprise?

A large out-of-control Chinese rocket is going to smash into Earth this coming weekend.

According to CNN:

“The large Chinese rocket that is out of control and set to reenter Earth’s atmosphere this weekend has brought about an alarming but not unprecedented situation.”

Notice CNN really wants to make this a big deal? Happens all the time. Guess where it doesn’t happen all the time: With rockets made in the United States!

Most of the time, when a rocket heads back to earth, it is burned up in the atmosphere. This ship is huge. It was suppose to drop supplies up on the space station when China lost control of it. The think weighs 22 tons and is traveling at 18,000 miles an hour.

Though NASA won’t know for an hour or two before the rockets enters the atmosphere, there is very little chance that this rocket is actually going to land on something.

This isn’t the first time China has lost control of a rocket. The last time they launched a rocket of this type, it came down and there were a bunch of rods landed on a house. No one was killed but it could have been a bad situation.

This just shows the incompetence of China and how iffy their technology really is. Well, it’s our technology that they stole but they can’t get any of it to work.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/really-negligent-on-chinas-part-chinese-rocket-will-crash-to-earth-this-weekend-plunging-at-18000-miles-per-hour